After reading the Mont-Ka book it wasn’t long before I decided I had to make may own version of The Eight. With 8 strong characters to model it seemed a shame that the ‘official’ team uses stock models (excluding Farsight of course). Whatever the Onegar Gauntlet is it’s clearly invisible! Likewise Brightswords’s Fusion Blades states “they are, in appearance, heavily modified fusion blasters.”, but they look typical on the model.

La’rua Assemble!

The “Official” Eight

So much cutting and kitbashing later. Here's my take on the Eight.

Farsight

Nothing much to do here. This is the Citadel Finecast Farsight so it took ALOT of cleaning. Then just a bit of green stuff to pad out the stone underfoot to make him actually stand upright!

Bravestorm

Starting with the Iridium XV8-02 from the new Crisis suit boxed set this was a fairly "stock" build. I imagined Bravestorm to be the second in command, so I tried to pose him in a leadership pose, pointing to direct units. I found a suitably "leader" head from my spares box to finish it off. The other main change is to use the XV85 thrusters to give him a bit more bulk.

As well as the Iridium armour, Bravestorm's other systems are a Stim injector and the Onegar gauntlet.

For the stimulant injector I cut one of the miscellaneous suit systems to make what I imagine to be refill ports for the drugs. And adjusted to make it look like the pipework feeds into the suit.

The gauntlets are the new XV85 Commander suit hands. I toyed with elbow rockets and various other OTT ideas, and finally decided that a simple pair of oversized (the XV85 hands look big on an XV8) fists would work. Because they are often described as glowing or bright, I'll paint these in the same Bronze effect that the disks on the sides of the jetpacks usually use.

Brightsword

Brightsword's aggressive 'attacking from the forefront' style called for a mean looking suit. Using forgeworld legs with feet from the classic metal Broadside to give it a stocky tough look. Even the helmet as a forward facing charging you antenna! The pose is meant to be inspired by Wolverines *skikt* pose, with the fusion blades deployed.

I placed another stimulant injector refill port on the chest, and then started on the fusion blades.

Yes those are Lego Lightsabers.

I drilled out the ends of the fusion blasters to insert the rods. Hopefully once painted and with some weathering and scorch marks, they'll give a lightsabre hot-blade effect.

Sha'vastos

In all the artwork Sha'vastos seemed to me to be the most under represented, and the most like a regular crisis suit.
But looking at the loadout, he's meant to have a Vectored retro-thrusters!

So by cannibalising the spare XV86 parts from the new XV85 Commander set I've given him huge thruster assemblies and some extra fins to stabilize.

I wasn't sure how to reflect the Puretide chip, after all it's not visible. So instead the targeter on the left shoulder and the command style head are meant to reflect some of the extra data gathering and communication facilities he would need to formulate his strategies.

Arra'kon

Half my work was done when GW pushed out the new plastic XV85 kit. To make Arra'kon stand out I added the counterfire defence system and repulsor impact field.
The RIF I envisioned to be a field projected by the two dishes. Forward field from the chest projector and rear from a mounting behind the head intake.
For the CDS I imagined an advanced markerlight tracking system. So combining the accessory that most looked like sensors, with marketlight pieces and spare weapon parts I fashioned a sensor suite.

Ob'latoai 9-0

I must confess, Ob'latoai was the first of these conversions and the one that most inspired me to start.

I wan't to try to reflect that Ob'latoai is old. So I decided to begin with a Forgeword Broadside rather than the larger new kit. I figured this slimmer suit also reflected slightly the fact that there's no need for a pilot bay anymore. However the old missile arms just didn't fit the bill. So in with the new chunky broadside arms and missile pods.

I also found the foot meshed well with one of the skull piles and this let me have a nice "braced" pose. And its not GrimDark enough if you don't have at least one member of your army crushing skulls underfoot!

Next I tweaked the head just to differentiate from stock and add more sensors. Added a targeting array to represent the velocity tracker and a magnetised seeker missile.

Finally if Ob'latoai 9-0 isn't in the pilot bay where is he? Of course, he's in the advanced "Drone" AI mounted on the rear.

Torchstar

Torchstar was another I was looking forward to making. She *loves* flames. And I figured that regular fuel supplies just wouldn't cut it.
So combining old+new flamers, and modeling a connection from stretched sprue to extra tankage on the jet housings. Jet fuel burns right? 😉

Then I modelled a marketlight to make the Neuroweb system jammer on the left shoulder. I wanted something that, like a marketlight, wasn't a gun, but did project something onto the target to jam it.

Various accessories on the center mount and right shoulder then make up the target lock and multi-spectrum sensor suite.

O'vesa

Finally the biggest and yet less obvious conversion.

I took the "Earth Cast Piloting Array" description very literally. When it says "built to accommodate" I followed suit and the main torso has been cut and filled with plasticard to make it about 1cm wider. I figure that ought to accommodate even the largest Earth caste member!

With various extra antenna and sensors to represent the extra data that Earth caste can process (and the Early Warning Override) and two AI cores to help process the data available.

Drones

For Brightsword's Warscaper drone I've used the Forgeworld technical drone. It looks like a shield drone and also has lots of sensors to represent the scanning technology in the drone.

The drone of the left (center drone for size comparison) was the result of a passing comment remarking how the drones look a bit like mini Enterprise's. A bit of hacking later and you have the NX-1701 Gun Drone. I'll probably make a few of these just to have something a little different for The Eights drones.

Summary

So there you have it.
I still need to trim some molding lines, and do some sanding and minor fills. Then off to basing and painting!
I think I've managed to pull personality into these characters and capture their essence. Hopefully once painted they'll stand out more than stock models would and really look like a team of Tau heroes.

Disclaimer

Facebook does have issues. They do retain a lot of data, for example when you type in the status box but then delete it, they note you changed your mind (but not exactly what you typed). They are quite open that in future if/when possible they’d like to track the deleted text content too.

And that’s the crux here. Facebook track every interaction you make with Facebook. They do this to try to learn what you like/dislike so they can show you more of the first and less of the latter. And so they can then target adverts at you better. If the advert is more likely something you like - and seen while reading a news post that you also like - you're more likely to click through.

And that's how Facebook make money. How much did you pay for Facebook? At last time it was reported (August 2012) Facebook had over 180,000 servers. It's likely to be far far more now. This hardware and the expertise required to maintain it - let alone the development staff needed to develop it - run to a bill of over $80 million a month - based on Facebook's claim it costs over $1bn a year to run.

Facebook trades in data. By collecting every scrap it can it build a profile and then use that to target adverts at you.

Many people have an instant knee jerk to that profiling. Yet in their wallet they carry a Nectar card, or a Tesco clubcard, or some other loyalty scheme card.

It has always astounded me that people who complain at even having to give a Surname or date of birth to a website, are quite happy to let Tesco record every item they buy. Think about that next time you have to do some sensitive shopping - a tube of piles cream, a cheap copy of 50 Shades of Grey. Don't be surprised if you buy burgers, buns, relish and insect replant - and receive offers on BBQs in an email later that week.

Facebook have time and again been show to be overaggressive on data collection. This is true, data is the currency you are using to pay for the service. But they have enough real flaws without unwarranted knee-jerk panic reactions.

Terms Of Service?

The Huff article frequently make reference to Terms of Service. Yet they list the "Application Permissions". These are not the same thing. It's just that the phrase "Terms of Service" is scarier sounding that app permissions. There is no Terms of Service agreement that pops up to accept like an EULA would do. The ToS are, like almost all other services, just a link at the end of the setting page. They link to Facebook's general ToS that interestingly hasn't been changed since November 2013.

So what are application permissions?

Firstly note that the Huff article is now 20 months old... that list is way out of date.

Also, it's interesting that the Android app has been targeted here. On iOS there is no app permissions to agree to - just find in app store, add the app and run as usual. No scary popups there.

Over on the Android platform, every app has to request permission to use certain features of your phone. The camera, network, SMS, contacts etc.

Remember that messenger has voice messaging, picture sending, and the option to link contacts so you can see their Facebook avatars as the contacts photo and status in contacts. How can the app link contacts without access to your contacts? How can it record a message without access to the microphone?

"But it says at any time?". Yes it does, otherwise every time you tap the record message button you'd have to click yes or no on a popup saying "Messenger wants to access the microphone now?". That would get annoying real quick - Microsoft got a lot of flack for that when they introduced UAC with similar constant popups back in Vista.

"How about reading and access to SMS?". Facebook sends verification texts to prove your identity and increase security. By detecting the SMS, reading it to verify the code and then deleting it, it automates this process without you having to copy and paste codes about. There is no permission for "access SMS from a certain number" only "access all SMS" so they have to use that permission.

In summary...

The Facebook messenger apps permissions aren't too dissimilar to many top end apps. Indeed the number of permissions is more a mark of how well the app integrates with your phone and contacts than any measure of privacy violation.

For those interested - here's the current list of permissions for the messenger app.

Facebook Messenger's Permissions - July 2014

A lot less worrying wording 20 months on.

Compare this to a popular mobile game...

Instead of asking why a messaging app that sends voice/images/texts to your contacts needs access to your microphone, camera and contacts list, maybe you should be asking why a King.com make a game that needs access to your browsing history, bookmarks and other running apps?

I’d been eyeing up the Pebble Smartwatch for a while and after much unsubtle hint dropping I received an early Christmas present. I thought now would be the perfect time to post a review based on real-world usage and living with it, instead of just first impressions and a quick play...

The Geeky Bit

Model: 301BL

OS: PebbleOS (Custom FreeRTOS)

Processor: STM32F205RE Cortex M3 CPU 120MHz

Memory: 128KB

Storage: 1024KB Flash (8 Apps/Watch faces)

Screen: 144 × 168 pixel E-Paper LCD

Inputs/sensors:

4 buttons

3-axis accelerometer with gesture detection

Magnetometer

Ambient light sensor

Radios: Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 4.0.

Size:

50.33mm H x 32mm W x 8.44mm D

1.981″ H x 1.3″ W x 0.332″ D

Weight: 47g (inc. wristband)

Power: 3.7V, 120mAh battery. ~5-7 Days

I'd been eyeing up the Pebble Smartwatch for a while and after much unsubtle hint dropping I received an early Christmas present. I thought now would be the perfect time to post a review based on real-world usage and living with it, instead of just first impressions and a quick play.

This pebble was purchased direct from https://getpebble.com/ via the express delivery option to here in the UK - and it arrived in just 3 working days, impressive! However, it did arrive in a Pebble branded package which was good for me as I got to open it early instead of waiting a week for Christmas Day, but bear that in mind if you're ordering it as a present for someone in the same house.

So what exactly is it?

Describing what the Pebble Smartwatch is is a bit trickier than you might expect. "Smartwatch" gives an expectation that the watch doesn't quite live up to in some ways. It's a term which makes people think of a having a small Smartphone strapped to the wrist, but there's no touch screen for one thing. The Pebble doesn't try to replace your phone. It's even better than that - it works with your phone.

Let me explain.

Despite it's rather chunky size for a watch, a touch screen would be too fiddly. 6th gen iPod nano users can probably confirm this - it's hard to multi-touch if you can barely fit more than one finger on the screen! It doesn't try to duplicate the functions of a smartphone, because you already have one of them. Instead, Pebble extends your phone in a simple and useful way: delivering your notifications to your wrist. Sure you can get apps to play games, control music, preview your phone's camera and so on, but that's not the Pebble's raison d'etre. Its primary purpose is to give a little vibration on your wrist that you wont miss, and to show a simple notice on-screen.

What's in the box?

Contents of The Box

Opening the box felt similar to unpacking an Apple product. Nicely presented, with the product in pride of place; the supporting contents nicely tucked away. Plus, there's no overwhelming you with large, weighty manuals.

At first I thought the USB charging lead was a bit chunky at the watch end, but the magnetic grip works well and the size works in its favour - removing any fiddlyness when connecting to charge.

Setup was a breeze, with a dedicated area of the website (go.getpebble.com) to guide you through pairing the watch and installing the partner app on your phone. Soon I had my Android XperiaZ connected and giving me notifications. Within the hour I was trying out different watch faces.

Living with Pebble

So after spending just over 5 weeks with the Pebble, how is it working? Very well, thanks for asking!

I quickly found that the default Android app "only" sends a limited set of notifications: phone, SMS, email, events, Google Talk Facebook and beta WhatsApp. But not, for example, Twitter. Apparently the iOS7 app for iPhone has no such limit and integrates heavily with the Notifications system, to allow sending of any notices.

However all is not lost, as the Android app market has been quick to flood Google Play with helper apps. I quickly found Pebble Notifier. Just tick the apps you want to receive notices for on the Pebble, make sure to set the official Pebble app to allow 3rd party notices, and voila. It's even better than the beta support in the official app for WhatsApp.

On the watch side, I quickly found a few sites including mypebblefaces.com to find watch faces. Using QRCodes to let me easily install faces and apps on my mobile was a clever and useful touch.

Being the geek I am, I also quickly found the new 2.0 SDK for Pebble. My Pebble was upgraded to the beta shortly after. After a brief hiccup when I didn't realise that 1.0 apps and watch faces are NOT compatible with 2.0, I found and installed my favourite, and now primary watch face: Fuzzy Time.

The chunky buttons are easy to find and use, yet recessed enough to prevent accidental triggering. The e-paper screen is perfectly readable in daylight without the backlight. And as this is e-paper NOT e-ink the refresh rate is still a healthy 30 fps when needed. The shake to light became so instinctive that asking me the time caused me to shake my wrist and look even when I wasn't wearing the watch! Similarly the waterproofing was invaluable as I've found my it so comfy I forget to take it off before washing up!

There's been a lot of talk on the bottom half of the internet about the Pebble's battery life being "shorter" than advertised. The box says "5-7 days*" the * being a notice that it depends upon the apps used. I agree with this. Because of the aforementioned Pebble Notifier app, I get more than the "typical" number of notifications to my watch, yet I'm still finding I'm using only about 10-15% a day. So 5-7 days is a good estimate in my experience.

What I did notice is that having a watch face with a second-hand - or similar frequent updates, say an app that uses the Bluetooth connection to pull data frequently, will cause the battery to drain quickly. The e-paper screen is at its best when you have a face with a low-refresh rate. Fuzzy-time, for example, only needs to update about once a minute.

On the phone side, apart from the persistent "Your Pebble is connected" notification I would barely know it's connected. Apparently the Bluetooth connection causes about 10-15% more battery drain on your phone but I've found that this balances out. I'm a heavy user of my XperiaZ and I drain the battery quickly at the best of times. But since getting Pebble it's been lasting longer. How can this be? Well, let me explain how Pebble has changed the way I interact with my Smartphone.

Before Pebble, if my phone buzzed it would get picked up to see what notice was there. I'd see an email or a tweet, open the app, see other content. I was then engaged in my phone, and would look at all the notices and calls for my attention it was issuing forth. Often the notice was for some silly fremium game trying to get me to tap to get my megafarmcityvillebucks or something else. I would still pick up my phone and even if I ignored that notice, I'd perform a series of "whilst I have the screen unlocked tasks". For example, "Oh I'll just check my email" or fall into browsing the Twitter timeline...

Now, how things work with Pebble. My wrist vibrates. I glance at my watch. I judge whether its important/time sensitive. Far more often than not, I just click to dismiss the notice.

I haven't fallen into the trap of engaging in my phone and there's little to distract on the pebble itself. Two important things occur. Notifications now barely derail me from my workflow; my attention stays on the task in hand. Secondly, I haven't turned on the power-hungry screen and back lights on my phone.

In my experience, I've found that the extra power used by Bluetooth is far exceeded by the power saved from the screen in this way.

I did fear that "spammy" notices might become an issue, but they are so easily dismissed that I have even enabled more notifications to my pebble. Whereas before spam might trigger engagement, now it is so easily ignored that I am less strict about which apps are permitted to notify me.

There are some features I wish I could have on the Pebble, but these are minor compared to the benefits I've found it brings me.

I do wish there was a native option to vibrate if the Bluetooth connection is lost so it reminds me if I walk too far away from my phone. Something similar to this bracelet, for example, as apps/faces offering this option drain the battery quickly.

Pros & Cons

Pros

It tells the time (easy to forget this one!).
Quick notifications.
Waterproof.
Highly customisable.
Easy to use, simple UI, with decent buttons to interact with.
Long battery life (if you avoid some power-hungry apps).

Cons

Pebbles Official Android app is less integrated than iOS. But this is easily covered with a 3rd party app.
Apps and Faces can be a bit confusing with some requiring "helper" apps; they are less than clear about this.
Varying quality of apps. Pebble have announced an app store so hopefully this will allow better vetting by the Pebble community.
Size. It IS a bit bulky. Personally I like it, you might not so much.

Where to get

I got mine from getpebble.com and it's now about £95 ($150) and about £15 (£25) for speedy shipping. As mentioned earlier, if you are getting it as a gift remember DHL ship it with Pebble branding on the package.

In summary

It's good value for money, easy to get started with and has changed they way I use my smartphone for the better. With most of the cons being software related, expect them to be addressed in the future. 9/10.

If you have any involvement in SEO you’ll have heard the phrase “Content is King”. Google has for many years been trying to make the content of a page the most important aspect and for the most part it has achieved that goal this year.

I've always said to any person that would listen that trying to game Google's algorithm is pointless. Every change Google has made, and every change they will ever make, is to try to make the content the focus - and then judge if that content is relevant and authoritative for the search the user entered. At best any "black hat" attempts to trick a good ranking will stop working, "Just make good content that's easy to use and access" I would always say.

The "box" in which the content is stored is irrelevant to whether that content is relevant or authoritative and should expose the content as best as possible with clear navigation and a simple user interface. You can think of old-school table based layouts and sites crowded with extra mark-up and distracting extra information as packing your content in impenetrable clamshell, Google won't try too hard to get inside and will just skim what it can get to easily.

But content only addresses half of the "relevant and authoritative" requirement. When written well, content will be relevant, but the authoritative aspect has to come from somewhere else.

But where? At the moment a large part of relevance comes from getting similarly relevant pages to recommend you with a back link.

You may have heard of Google's 'Penguin' updates which tweak their detection of backlink abuse. If you vanished from results pages when one of these updates rolled out then you need to clean up your incoming links, and maybe even disavow any links you can't get removed. Don't let anyone tell you it's because of your site's structure, or sitemaps or some such nonsense. Heck, sitemaps simply tell Google where your content is (and it can usually find that itself) and how often it changes.

But there's a new kid on the block; social media. This rising Prince is ready to take its place alongside the content king. The best content in the world is useless without good distribution. What better way to see if something is authoritative than to measure how people are talking about it?

Social sharing is rapidly growing as source of organic traffic, and one you can no longer ignore. Don't just focus on the King, remember to effectively distribute your content via social media sources as well, and you'll notice Google starts to treat you better in return.

Whilst working as a Web Developer on many sites I’ve often had clients far more focused on aesthetics than function.

This obsession has included things as specific as being asked to move text one pixel to the left, to the more vague “bold, bolder, bolder…less bold”.

This has even lead to me developing a sixth sense for the right time to spot and save a 'finished' version of the website. Client's often have several options they want testing which I know they will go on to reject. However, just like the Matrix, they have to see it for themselves. I then just restore back to the point the project was really done .

However this myth that pretty websites do well just isn't true. Whilst a certain level of professionalism typically begets a nice clean design that looks attractive, this is not the end goal.

Take for example lingscars.com. With £50m value of cars leased in 2012 you can't argue the site works.

Have a journey on the WayBack Machine to Amazon of just a year ago and you'll find a pretty boring, dare I say it, ugly site. eBay has similarly recently tried to upgrade its aesthetic. Both these sites have become giants before they addressed their appearance.

Also take a moment to look at Craigslist - here's the London UK page. No one is going to this site for looks.

So why do they work?

In almost every case above the answer is content and usability.

Hidden beneath clever psychological marketing it may be for LingsCars, but if you scratch away the GeoCities styleé veneer you'll find everything you could possibly want to know about leasing cars.

And whilst LingsCars sacrifices some degree of usability for this clever marketing, the others don't. Plentiful navigation to get to the exact department abounds and a large search box finishes off each the design.

People have long made analogies between bricks and mortar stores and websites. So let's further this trend - the clarity of signs you have around the shop marking each department (Navigation) and the availability of shop assistants to ask for help and their knowledge (Search) will do far more to help customers find what they want to buy (Content). The fonts used on the signs, the staff uniform, all these factors are secondary.

This is not to say design should be neglected, not at all. Bad design can destroy confidence and good design will distinguish you as more professional than competitors. But its all for naught if it's been prioritized above usability and content.

A little comparison with Relevanssi shows me a gain of 1.5 seconds on the results page of my most used word. This is for now, in my opinion, the most interesting alternative to the default search WP for people who are looking for quick results.

6.1.3: Command alias' /mh /mobh and /mhealth to cope with other plugins using /mobhealh
Made "Bar character" editable
Made bar length configurable.
Options to not show bars on NPCs and animals.
Fixed Minor ScoreBoard bugs.